Susan Bean – Hidden in Plain Sight: Clay Sculpture in South Asia

This talk is connected to Susan Bean’s recent publication Clay Works—Earthen Sculpture in South Asia (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2026). The event is hosted in collaboration with the Indian Art Circle lecture series, SOAS.

About the Talk

This presentation introduces Clay Works—Earthen Sculpture in South Asia, recently released by Bloomsbury Publications, London. Air-dried clay (a.k.a. terracruda), along with stone, metal, wood, and fired clay, stands among South Asia’s oldest and most widely used mediums for sculpture. Typically finished in vivid color, the medium has been largely overlooked in studies of the region’s arts, often misidentified as stucco or terracotta, and sidelined as too fragile and exuberantly colored to be ‘art.’ The presentation brings together some of the most prominent practices across the region to consider why painted air-dried clay has been so valued as medium for figural sculpture, and what its sidelining reveals about the study of art and visual culture.

About the Speaker

Susan S. Bean is an Independent Scholar and Former Senior Curator of South Asian Art at Peabody Essex Museum. She is Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Center for Art & Archaeology, American Institute of Indian Studies, India and USA.

Free and open to all. In person and online via Zoom.

To attend online, email emd@royalasiaticsociety.org for a link.